Hours and days of entertainment! We just finished this adventure last night after about 4 sessions, and my players came away really excited and inspired to keep going with the Avernus campaign! I'm going to guess that this will probably have been a highlight for months to come, given that they're a higher level party, and it was much easier with the PDF's suggestions for scaling encounters up than it has been for the first bit of Descent Into Avernus.

For those with stronger level parties, I found it worked much better to give the final big-bad a more menacing CR: I made him a vampire instead of a ghoul, allowed him to have contact with the shield in order to use its Fire Wall to trap the party inside, and gave him some inconsequential magical abilities throughout the cat-and-mouse period, such as finally casting little torches to come find him when the party went full dungeon-exploration completionist. I also turned the final level of the crypt into a map puzzle, so that when all the ghouls bust out after the fight, they had to put their mapper (squishy, not used to leading the charge) in the front of the group, or else roll history or survival checks to make sure they were going the right way. I very loosely clumped the ghouls into groups of ten that showed up whenever they passed a larger crypt area and eyeballed when a group of them would be encountering the party, rather than tracking them all in chase turn order. It worked out great!

Finally, I had to fill out some of the crypt lore with ascended Hhunes' deeds on those crypt rooms, because it was feeling a little same-y same-y. It kept the party distracted and occasionally led to some false puzzle shenanigans that made the loot in those coffins worth the digging up. Not only do I have the barbarian attuning to an OP shield, I have the bard attuning to the dagger, and they're both Chaotic to the extreme to begin with. The ranger saved two Kruthik eggs and managed to tame both of them upon hatching at the end of the adventure, and the party has a nemesis in the form of a thwarted incubus. Pretty good value for a 4 session diversion in Baldur's Gate! If they weren't going to Hell before, they definitely are now.

Thanks, MT Black! You knocked it out of the park!

So much bang for your buck with this adventure, with random encounters throughout that challenge characters to strategize more than mine have usually had to. While COVID quarantines were happening I was able to stretch this out across several online sessions. Excellent for when you're in need of a great intro to the horrors of the underdark!

If you're running this for the higher end of Tier II play, I recommend scaling the battles up to 'deadly' whereever it's possible and makes sense. The advised encounters could be too easy and lead to a false sense of safety, as I've discovered with other DM's Guild adventures.

Great little story thread, lots and lots of combat, not too many emotional or moral arcs (though there's room for those who lean on RP). A nice, clear-cut adventure for players who want to smash some baddies and save the day.

Concept is solid, 4/5 execution (would make 4.5 if I could.) NPC's were quirky in a way that stuck in the players' minds (which is a big deal for my party!) Santac'Laus was sympathetic enough for my party to kill TWICE (yep, they used a diamond on him after realizing he was all about friendship, then killed him again once they realized his version of friendship was too difficult to resolve in a few sessions. :I)

I would have liked to have the modified beasts get a statblock for ease of use while DMing (eg: eye beasts). Help with maps would have been fantastic, too; I ran this via R20 during quarantine and there were a lot of different encounters to prep for, which meant a lot more hunting down of resources. Some modified chase rules for the first encounter with Santac'Laus would also have helped!

Lastly, it would be nice to have modifications for higher level parties. This says tier 2, but it means the beginning of tier 2, not the end. I had to heavily modify random encounters to make them more challenging... except the mistletoe. A+ trap, two of my party tried kissing to escape, now everybody ships them.

Overall, very cute module recommended by a party that straddles the line between friendship-is-magic and murder hobos. Lots and lots of potenial for hooks into further campaign exploration, not just what's presented at the end. (Eg: what happens if you plant a snowman's nose carrot?? Who knows, our druid will find out.)

What a great premise! However, this isn't built in a standard way to other D&D content so it takes a while to parse. I feel there is a little too much info about Tobe's backstory, and not enough info on what players can investigate before the evening traps them inside. For example, my players decided to grill the neighbours before entering the house, and there's no info about them. It was a good opportunity for me to infer some of Tobe's backstory, at least!

The map really came in handy, so I appreciate the update! I would LOVE this entire module to be copy-edited. There are lots of grammar and spelling errors that, while not crucially in error, do slow the reading down.

Also, some tables for rolling loot at the end would be a very nice addition. I liked being able to roll for loot directly from the PHB, but those are not formatted for rolling and slowed down wrapping up the module.

Overall, if you know how to run a module, this is a fun premise, but you're best to start characters off inside the house at night with the doors locked rather than allow for any roaming, at least with the current version. It's not meant for a sandbox feel.

Played this over Roll20 with friends and it required a tonne of up-front work to get converted, but it was well worth it. The content is superb! Playing underwater with aquatic races is really fun and worth the work, but there is a barrier to entry for the DM and this is NOT going to fare well unless you have players who want to come back to the same adventure for several weeks in a row. This wound up being 5-7 sessions of 5-7 hours EACH over R20 (I may have lost track of time...) and my players really enjoyed getting into new characters and befriending everything under the sea! Beware, as the DM you may wind up playing up to 7 spell-slinging NPC's in addition to hoards of bad guys. I hope you are okay with your players getting up to stretch while you narrate good chunks of action. (You may want to prep spells/tactics ahead of time.)

(spoilers below) My players wound up being so sympathetic to the kraken baby and the priestesses that they nearly died saving them; they even recruited the evil priest Shoalar to their cause, until he and his myrmidons were overwhelmed by Gar's army of undead.

My main nitpick about this is the race against time at the end becomes more of a slog. Having to determine, in encounter mode, who gets to Gar and the kraken first often leaves those without teleportation abilities WAY behind. Because the map is so huge, I had to split it into chunks to fit it in R20 and swapping back and forth between maps became a time-wasting element that really took the tension out of the boss battle. It would be nice to have an optimized way to get from Gar's throne to the kraken's safe haven in a virtual play space.

Also, it would be nice if the map and character sheets were included as separate parts of the package sold at dmsguild wrapped up in a zip, instead of embedded in the pdf. Monster stats as a separate file would also have been VERY handy as I spent an ungodly amount of time scrolling between monsters and NPC's for every. single. encounter. This file was formatted for print, but overall it doesn't do well when used solely in a digital capacity without hours of tweaking and either multiple devices (laptop, tablet, phone) open OR time wasted flipping around.

To the creator: There is also a typo in one of the undead stat blocks; their weapon is listed as a dagger but elsewhere is listed as a sword. :o Damage suggests sword, not dagger. (I think the assassin or the master?)

Overall: 5 stars for characters, NPC's, and fight set up--this is a great little campaign, not just a one-shot. Game flow was significantly less well-received only because my players and I are new to R20 and this module was not adapted to post COVID-19 distancing play styles, which is no fault of the author's. Once you're back at the table with your players, this is an admirable beast of a module.

Probably the most difficult foes my party has come up against yet! This is a challenging little one-shot that wound up taking three 6-hour sessions to complete. (Once my friends found one treasure, they needed to scour for EVERYthing.) Very nearly managed to kill two of my party, helping them kick off some much-wanted character growth and wary attitudes. Did, however exacerbat their morally questionable grave-robbing tendencies...

This adventure fits well as an aside to any urban layover or noble's crypt outside of a mid-sized town. Prepare ahead of time and expect the adventure to take longer than predicted (at least 4-5 hours.)

I found the blocks of text are quite dense and easy to miss important details when you're mid-game. If the adventure can be updated, I'd ask for better visual hierarchy of information and some more in-game cues to help players recognize they can grill the NPC monsters for more information.

For visual hierarchy: More attention to line breaks, headers, bullet point spacing, paragraph spacing, and in-set boxes for 'read aloud' text would be great! -A block at the end re-iterating rewards both XP and items would also help. -Can the various vampire spawn be given their own stat blocks and moved to an appendix to help the in-game exploration and social aspects flow better?

Thanks for putting this together!

My nephew, niece, and a couple of friends had a great time with this--they did a lot more cooperating than I anticipated and soundly won the game with a feeling of triumph. It was a good intro to D&D with a very simplified take on how to fight, but I'd be curious how we could add in checks for social rolls other than flat 'roll a d20 and if it's higher than X, it can happen'. My niece was shockingly clever with persuading Loomis to help a friend on death's door with a healing potion out of the usual timing. ;u; Lots of good memories with this.

I'd love some sequels!

Overall this was a nice intro module with some really fun mechanics for small parties (eg: 1 DM & 1-2 players) that allow fey familiars that can level with your character. This quest has two routes you can choose (lawful evil vs chaotic evil) that can make the game-play slightly different, so you can run it at least twice and have newish results. The social pillar of game-play felt a bit stilted, as I needed to massage both quest-givers' motives and characteristics before the party felt compelled to work for them.

The boons at the end are a little OP (an artifact to speak with all animals and another to never be surprised when resting again!) They're something to keep in mind if you planned on having characters keep watches for unexpected raids or long-rest attacks.

There are a few typos and grammatical errors that could be quickly cleaned up with another pass at editing, or perhaps by asking a nit-picky friend to review. Nothing game-breaking, but they did occasionally break my flow at the table.

The art is cool! I'm excited to try the second module despite my nit-picks. I will be sure to review more thoroughly for the second module and maybe whip up any NPC/RP background info in bullets... but otherwise, this was a 'good to grab and go' module for folks who want a quick intro to the hack-and-slash-and-also-magic kinds of adventures.

This took two sessions to complete, but was a lot of fun for everyone involved. The boss battle was a little bit too easy for the players; I should have mixed it up with the strongest monster stat block already provided instead of the mid-big-bad. Thanks for those, by the way! The new monsters had everyone guessing.

Point of (spoilery?) fun: My barbarian managed to dissuade the hunter sharks from attacking the party with a combo of 'speak with animals' and his head glubbed under water, and a lot of eelfolk chum as both downpayment and post-battle reward. I'm a little afraid he's going to be jumping sharks in the near future.

The end reward of free or cheap passage over water is a great lead-up to any campaign needing to get somewhere overseas. Mine happens to be on the Sea of Stars, so this fit perfectly.

Great work! I'm looking forward to trying out more from this author.

My players adored this. We didn't get much actual investigating done, but the twists and turns during battle really thrilled 'em. I wound up adjusting the CR way up, but we all still had fun.

I'd totally recommend this for Halloween one-shots or as part of a spooky scary silly campaign.

Running for a party of two players, I found the skill checks were a little too easy for them across the board, and the battles a little too hard. I had to introduce some guards to the final battle with McSmiles.

I’d love to see a follow-up, as the storyline is unique and compelling, and some specific, narrative use for the Swiftfinger Signet Ring would be really nice.

Overall, I’d recommend this for more city-oriented characters (especially those mostly of a noble background) but I’d also recommend keeping a close eye on the DC’s for checks and number of baddies in the battles to adjust the difficulty for your party.

Most of this adventure is quite good, and has been keeping my party's attention and delight really well!

One thing I found not cool was a throw-away joke involving something along the lines of 'kill your gays' trope, a la a sensitive student suiciding for perceivedly disappointing their father, and that's played for laughs. I'm planning on stripping that out as it doesn't affect the rest of the adventure, but just wanted to note that I found it in bad taste.

As an LGBT nerd, you stumble on this kind of humour all the time in D&D because straight folks don't feel the personal strike it deals. At this point I've come across this kind of humour so often that it's not unexpected... but it'd be nice if I didn't have to keep my guard up while playing or DMing with content I buy. I think that if the joke were retooled to be more good vs evil instead of ~sensitive~ vs controlling bad dad, or if the joke were outright removed, I'd bump my rating back up to five.

Otherwise it's a nice riff on Harry Potter and and a very nice zombie romp that keeps things switched up. Very good for aspiring treasure hunters, good-doers, wizards looking to flesh out their spell lists!